


The Absolute Truth

by SecretNerdPrincess



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Garcia Flynn deserved Christmas, Happy Ending, garcy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 08:22:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17199974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecretNerdPrincess/pseuds/SecretNerdPrincess
Summary: Every Christmas Eve, Lucy Preston goes back to the same Sao Paulo bar. To the site of her greatest regret. Waiting for Garcia Flynn. Praying for him to walk through the door.





	The Absolute Truth

**Author's Note:**

> My heart hurt, so I wrote it to share with all of you.

_December 24, 2014_

Alive.

He’s alive.

Her relief, short lived. Not her Flynn. Not yet. Her heart cracked open in the dingy light of that Sao Paulo bar. Standing there, smiling at the man she missed.

Hesitating.

Standing there, nothing made sense. How could she leave him on that beach alone?

Anonymous.

Forgotten.

A John Doe on an autopsy table. No one to tell his story. What could she possibly say to make any of this okay?

Could she change it? Her love for him infiltrated the journal; she knew that now. It hadn’t been enough to save him.

Lucy crossed the room, the leather bound pages a weight in her hand. The closer she got, the larger the fracture inside her grew. Until she could touch him again.

She wanted to rage at the universe that she loved him. This broken man drinking in the blue light of a bar at the end of his world. Nothing could make this better. So she did the only thing she could.

She told him the absolute truth.

A Hail Mary pass in defiance of a history that stole his sacrifice.

The ache in her head grew and she fled. Back to the Lifeboat. With every step, praying to every god she knew. The memory of kissing him, his stubble against her cheek, chased her through the streets crying his name. He’d be there. He had to be.

She unbuckled herself before they even settled in the present, wanting to rip open the door, cursing the slow reveal of the bunker. Perched on the edge of the time machine, she remembered his stride with perfect clarity, expecting it as she searched for him.

Her heart shattered knowing she’d failed him. Again.

xxxxx  
_December 24, 2024_

_I have to go. Have to know. I can’t abandon him. Not again. I won’t._

Researching the Italian revolutions of 1848, Lucy found her. Anita Garibaldi, Brazilian revolutionary who fought side by side with the great love of her life, Giuseppe. Who wandered for days without food and water to find her way back to him. Who gave her life for what they believed in.

Anita never gave up and she died in the arms of the man she loved.

Maybe Flynn lived and carved out a life for himself. Hiding from the world. Hiding from her. He’d earned his rest, she shouldn’t intrude. But if he lived, she had to know. Even if he never wanted to see her again.

She knew him. If Flynn survived, he’d be there.

 _You’re still choosing him. He’s dead, Lucy._ _  
_ _I won’t believe that. I can’t._

Walking through the Sao Paulo fog, she allowed herself to hope. Imagined seeing him, older, slightly greying around the temples. His smirk, he knows without turning when she enters the bar. Would he turn away as she approached? Would he give her time to confess? Allow her words to tumble over one another begging his forgiveness.

Six years and an entire timeline lay between them.

She didn’t care what deus ex machina the universe used, she just wanted him to live. So desperately, she was willing to walk away from him forever if that was the price. She’d do it. She’d fight Rittenhouse for the next ten years, she didn’t care. Anything.

Just let him live.

_What don’t you understand? We just left him there. He deserved better._

Fifteen feet away, the door to the bar. She smoothed the burgundy dress. Terrified to cross that final threshold. He’d be there. She knew he would.

The door opened and a drunk couple stumbled out into the street. The blue light of the bar spilling out. She caught a glimpse of a dark haired man before it closed and startled into motion.

Five years of forgetting. Burying the grief, the regret. One year of refusing to believe, her pleas silenced because in truth, she needed him. Needed his steady loyalty. Needed his arms, a barrier against the worst. His simple support. His love. Yes, his love, she craved it. Every minute of every day as she denied herself even a sliver of hope.

It all crashed into her as she dragged open the old wooden door. As she searched the room for the one face she wanted to see more than anyone else in the world. The man who helped her believe anything was possible. Who never asked one thing of her and gave his life instead of risking her happiness.

Garcia Flynn was nowhere to be found.

She stayed until closing, waiting. Drinking vodka straight and remembering the night in his room. Replaying his careful touch after her injury in Salem. The smile he gifted her as Robert Johnson played in the background. Cradling her in San Francisco.

On her third drink, she realized none of it existed in this timeline.

xxxxx  
_December 24, 2025_

_What gave him the right?_

Lucy signaled the bartender for another vodka. The tears ran angry down her cheeks and she didn’t care. She was tired of holding it all together. The girls were her only sunshine. She hated Stanford and her life there, Wyatt away on missions for Agent Christopher more often than not. He didn’t even argue when she told him she was going back.

So they celebrated Christmas early for the twins and Lucy removed the burgundy dress from the back of the closet and packed it into her overnight bag.

Flynn asked about him one night during spaghetti dinner.

_“Jeffrey’s named after his dad.”_

_“Is that so?” Lucy focused her attention on her precocious dark haired child._

_Flynn twirled the strands of noodles around her fork. “Who am I named after? It’s not daddy or you.”_

_Only two words escaped before her sobs. “A hero.”_

She excused herself from the table and cried herself to sleep.

The next day she took her daughter to the park and told her about her namesake. About his bravery. That he was a hero who fought on the right side of history from day one, but nobody else knew it.

_“He was a hero and no one knew?”_

_“Not until it was too late,” Lucy admitted._

_Big, brown eyes gazed up at her, guileless. “Did you know, Mommy?”_

_“Yes,” Lucy blinked back tears. “Yes, I did.”_

Garcia should be here. No matter what the journal said, they could’ve changed it. But he took away her choice. Decided for both of them that they were better off without the other. He didn’t believe in them. In her. Would rather face certain death than risk his heart.

Even as she thought the words, she knew she didn’t believe them.

It didn’t change her anger.

She slammed down the vodka. “Well, you know what?” she declared absently as the bartender refilled her glass. “What’s good for the goose and all that jazz.” She stared at the clear liquid, her only comfort through the lonely nights. “He chose to leave me. Not other way around. I choose not to remember him.” The alcohol burned down her throat as if she could burn Garcia Flynn from the very fiber of her being. She could forget him. She could. “Do you hear that, Garcia Flynn, you stupid fucking asshole? You hear that?” The rest of the vodka disappeared as she tossed cash on the bar. “I don’t need you anyway.”

xxxxx  
_December 24, 2026_

_You’re supposed to be here._

Lucy let herself get good and drunk this year. Every day for a week she crawled into Flynn’s seat at the bar. Expecting him. Knowing better.

She’d go home tomorrow. Her annual pilgrimage to the site of her biggest regret. Her biggest mistake. She should’ve dragged Garcia from that bar stool in 2014 and shoved his ass in the Lifeboat, damn the consequences.

“You don’t believe that.”

The warm velvet of his voice wrapped around her. “I do. I’d give anything.”

“Lucy…” He wasn’t really there, but the mirage reached for her hand, entwining their fingers.

Hollow comfort. She didn’t care. “Anything.”

“Not the girls…”

“Not the girls.” Silent tears ran down her cheeks. “Tell me what to do, Flynn. Please.”

“I can’t do that.”

Lucy’s laugh, bitter. “Oh, now you’re going to let me choose for myself.”

“I’m sorry about that.” Flynn’s sad smile flickered in an out of existence. “You wore the dress again.”

She shrugged, waving for another drink. “Doesn’t change anything. You’re still dead.”

“Guess I am.” A weightless thumb caressed her palm.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She chugged down half her drink. “Do you have an idea? I’ll do it. Anything. No matter how dangerous. I don’t care, you’re worth the risk. You were always worth the risk.”

His good laugh slipped under her defenses. Her favorite laugh. “I’m a figment of your imagination, Lucy. Any idea I have…”

She turned for one last look at him, but her mind denied her. “Came from me.”

What could she do? Lucy already forced Denise to search through every database her access allowed. The older woman disagreed on how healthy it was for Lucy to continue searching, but in the end, she conceded.

Denise never understood this driving need she had, but they spent months covertly searching anyway, using the resources of the federal government; they were searching for a wanted terrorist after all. As far as they could find, Garcia Flynn died on that beach in 2012.

She refused that legacy for him.

Denise destroyed the Lifeboat. Hadn’t she? They talked about it. Maybe. But, maybe not.

xxxxx  
_December 24, 2027_

“Leave the bottle.”

Without a time machine, Lucy Preston failed. One scrap of faith remained that Garcia Flynn was out there living his best life, but she’d never see him again. Never hold his hand. Never tell him how much she loved him even now. She had to leave him behind. To stop imagining his voice. His hands. His lips.

She couldn’t keep leaving the girls like this. Amy and Flynn deserved their mother on Christmas, not just the woman who stumbled into the house halfway through the holiday with tear stained cheeks wearing exhaustion like a cloak. She put on a brave face. Always. But her daughters sensed the truth and they were all she had left.

_I know, somehow, some way, we will save the people we love._

Except Garcia Flynn. The one man who never lost hope. Who believed until the very end. Who denied her goodbye, her last words to him left unspoken. Phantom limbs reaching for a man made of memories.

Letting go of Garcia Flynn hurt more than she ever imagined. Nine years later, her chest still a cavern, empty and echoing with the ghosts of if only and might have been.

xxxxx  
_December 24, 2028_

The last year. Flynn made her promise. The elder of the twins saw through her. Saw everything. Maybe it was the talk in the park. It didn’t matter. One day she would seek out the truth on her own and Lucy would have to tell her daughter the absolute whole of it. Of why she sat here year after year. The girl in the burgundy dress.

“Is this seat taken?”

She knew that voice. “Connor Mason.” She signaled to the bartender for a second glass. “What brings you to this neck of the woods?”

“You,” he said, simple as that, and sipped his drink.

“You found me.”

“So I did,” Mason chuckled. “It wasn’t hard.”

“Denise?”

“Denise.” He glanced over at her. “She’s worried about you.”

She shrugged, couldn’t blame the woman. No matter how she tried, Lucy seemed unable to hide the gaping hole in her heart from anyone.

“To Garcia,” she replied instead, tilting her glass to his. “You were the only one who called him that, you know. It meant a lot.”

“I liked him.” They toasted, falling silent. The crowd droned on in the background. “He deserved better.”

“I know.” Lucy swiped at an errant tear. “Is that why you came here tonight, Mason? To remind me of my failures? Do you think I don’t know how much I lost?”

The older man laid his hand over hers. “I know, Lucy. I’m sorry. That’s not why I’m here.”

Flynn’s words haunted her and she couldn’t hold back her tears. “He thought he had to die to save me. I put that in his head. I did it. I was trying to save his life and I failed. I failed him every single time. And I’m sorry. There’s nothing I’m more sorry for in this whole world.”

“Shhh, Lucy, stop. Breathe.” Connor rubbed circles around her back, waiting as she calmed.

Flynn surrounded her, whispering in her ear. “Why are you here?”

“I need to ask you something, Lucy.” He reached for the bottle and refilled both their glasses.

Sipping, she studied him. “You couldn’t have just picked up the phone?” What could he possibly want to ask her that would require a trip to another continent?

“I’ve always regretted what happened with Garcia. It never set right with me. I didn’t understand why you didn’t save him. I understood the others, but you? The two of you were close.”

“We were,” she stared straight forward, afraid to give too much away. “You have a question?”

“The bunker’s a very small space. Late one night, I walked by Flynn’s room on the way to the kitchen for some tea.” He hesitated, attempting delicacy. “I didn’t mean to overhear, but as I passed you called out his name…”

The memory broke free of its hiding place. Even after ten years, she remembered the shape of his lips, the trail of his fingers down her spine. They’d found love in the small hours when they thought the rest of the bunker asleep.

“It started after Kennedy.”

“I’d like to make amends for my mistakes. None of this would’ve happened without my ego and my money.” He held up a hand, waving off her protest. “I’ve thought of nothing else for the last ten years. I left it alone because I thought you were happy.” He studied her face, her shifting eyes as she avoided his gaze. “But you aren’t happy.”

Lucy gave up trying to hide her tears. “I love my daughters, but this is not the life I dreamt--not the life I dream of, no.”

Mason’s eyes crinkled with a sad smile. “I’d like to offer you a gift, but I need to know something first.” She nodded, encouraging him, wanting to confess. “Why didn’t you save him?”

Her last secret. “Because I was pregnant and terrified to risk his children.”

He pulled her into his arms and she sobbed against his shoulder. For the life they never had. For the father her girls would never know.

She scrubbed at her eyes. “I’d just lost everything I’d ever loved and a future I’d only just begun to imagine. My sister. My mother. Flynn. There was no one to save him.”

“I’d have gone for him if I’d known. I want you to know that. I understand why you didn’t say anything. Why you made the choices you did.”

“I chose safety. I should’ve risked it all.”

“I think he would disagree. He would want you to keep his girls safe. To give them the best life possible without him. You did that, Lucy.”

“I made the choices I made. There’s nothing I can do about that.” Lucy sighed, resigned at last to the truth.

“What if you could save him after all?” Connor’s face lit up as his hand slipped into his jacket.

A spark kindled inside her. “What are you saying?”

“It’s happened again. I feared it would, but Rittenhouse doesn’t know about it yet. We still have time.” Handed her a manila envelope. “There’s another time machine. Rufus and Jiya’s company this time. It was too far along for them to stop it by the time they figured out what was happening. They’ve both agreed.”

Her heart pounded, pulse racing. “What do you mean, agreed?”

“You have to take us back to right before he died. You have to save him.” His eyes pleaded with her. “It’s starting again, I know it. We can’t let it. Benjamin Cahill went underground, but I can guarantee he hasn’t stopped his schemes. It’s only a matter of time. Without Garcia Flynn? We don’t stand a chance.”

“How am I supposed to save him?” Lucy didn’t care, she’d do it.

“Saving him is easy, especially since we don't have to worry about saving your daughters.” He broke out in an excited grin. “You just pop back to 2012, scoop him up off the beach and drop him back in 2018 with Agent Christopher and I before the team gets back from the old west.”  

“That’s the easy part?” Had Connor Mason gone crazy in the ensuing years? “How am I supposed to find him?”

“The tech’s come a long way. That little girl? She's a genius. It’s no wonder Rufus found her. Anyway, don’t worry about that. We’re covered there. That’s not the hard part.”

Whatever the price, she’d pay it. “I’ll bite, what’s the hard part?”

“You’re going to have to steal the time machine.”

xxxxx  
_December 24, 2018_

“Denise! Mason!” Lucy yelled for them as she dragged an unconscious Garcia Flynn into the bunker. They both came running. “You have to save him. Please. You have to.” Pain stabbed through her head as she crumpled to the ground with him in her arms.

Mason skidded to a stop. “Which timeline are you from?”

“There’s no time, he’s dying.” Denise knelt beside her and Lucy grabbed her hand. “I’ve come so far. He has to live. I can’t fail him. Not again.”

Agent Christopher set to work examining Flynn, sending Mason to gather the medical supplies. Lucy cradled Flynn despite knowing her time there ran short. She had to leave before her past self returned. Before the timeline settled into place.

“I need to get him to the table, Lucy. I need to move him.”

Lucy bent her forehead to his. “I love you, Garcia Flynn. No matter what. Don’t you ever give up on us. Don’t forget what I told you on the beach.”

Mason and Agent Christopher lifted him out of her arms and she felt bereft without his weight.

“He’ll be alright, I promise.” The older woman offered her a hand up from the floor. “You need to go, Lucy. Go home. He’ll be waiting for you.”

xxxxx  
_December 25, 2018_

Garcia Flynn woke in his bed, confused. Every inch of his body hurt. Had he dreamed her? Burgundy dress blowing in the wind, standing on top of that dune, bathed in the light of a time machine.

_“You will not die on me, Garcia Flynn.” He remembered the slide of her slim fingers into his. “I love you. Please don’t leave me.”_

_“You aren’t supposed to be here.” She wrapped her arm around his waist and he feet tried to gain purchase on the shifting sand. “Are you real? Am I dying?”_

_“Not if I have anything to say about it.” She clawed up the dune, ignoring her body’s rejection of the timeline. “I screwed everything up the first time around..” He slipped from her hold. “Please Garcia, nothing’s right without you. Please don’t make me live without you again.”_

_“I just wanted you to be happy.” He pushed to his knees,  willing to fight._

_“You make me happy.” She used all her strength to get them to the top of the hill. “Let me take you home,” she whispered, dropping her hand to her belly. “Your girls need you.”_

He opened his eyes. Staring at his familiar ceiling.

“Oh, thank god, you’re awake.” Lucy rushed to his side. “I thought I’d lost you forever.”

Her face swam into focus, eyes red-rimmed, dark circles beneath them. “I love you, Lucy Preston. I should’ve told you sooner.”

“There’s so much I should’ve told you.” She lowered herself to lay next to him. “I love you, too.”

His fingers reached out to brush her stomach. “Is it true? Am I going to be a father again?” he asked, the last word barely a whisper. Her hand flattened over his.

She didn’t know how he knew, but right now she didn’t care. “You’re going to be a father, Garcia.”


End file.
